In the preliminary preparation of borders or beds, provided the soil be well dug to a depth of two or three feet, a really heavy dressing of farm-yard manure should be well incorporated--say about a ton to every two hundred square yards. The manure should not be buried, but should be intimately mixed with the whole depth of soil. A light sandy soil will take a heavier, and a heavy soil a lighter dressing than the average one suggested. The beds should be manured and otherwise prepared sometime before the planting is to take place, as many plants and especially many bulbous plants cannot stand the proximity of fresh and rank manure.
When the ground is thus properly prepared at the start, little more actual cultivation is needed in the case of most hardy herbaceous plants beyond annual top dressing with manure, occasional loosening of the surface soil where not covered by dwarf plants, weeding, and occasional thinning or division of big clumps. Whenever a plant is taken up, the opportunity should be seized to add a fork-load of rotten manure to the spot vacated. Top dressings should as far as possible be placed round plants in early spring, just before new growth starts, as the manure is then soon covered and concealed by foliage.
Bone meal, finely-broken bones, small quantities of guano, and even carefully-applied nitrate of soda (half-an-ounce to the square yard) have their respective values, but the novice will be wise in placing reliance on farm-yard manure for the bulk of his plants.
The gardening beginner will be well advised to obtain the greater number of his perennials as plants; but there are some which are easily grown from seeds, and seed-sowing is the method by which all the hardy annuals and biennials are to be raised. In the case of annual and biennial plants, such as sweet-peas, mignonette, nasturtiums, convolvuluses, nigellas, and the rest, the seed may well be sown in the open borders or beds, if the soil be but well dug and finely divided. It is advisable, however, to mix a little sand and leafmould with the soil, and to give the seed-bed a good watering on the night previous to sowing the seeds, if the soil be otherwise dry. At the same time it is necessary to avoid sowing when the ground is sticky after or during heavy rain. The seed having been sown in finely-pulverised soil which is neither too wet nor too dry, it is a good practice to press the seed-bed, either by the use of a roller, or by patting it with the flat of a spade. This tends to promote the flow of a continuous supply of moisture from the deeper parts to the surface of the soil by means of capillary attraction. As, however, this proceeding also promotes a continuous loss of soil-moisture by evaporation, the surface should be loosened by hoe or rake as soon as the young plants appear--indeed, in the case of the more deeply-buried seeds, such as sweet-peas, the surface should be slightly disturbed as soon as the sowing and pressing have been performed. In dry weather, evaporation from the seed-bed may be checked by shading it with a screen placed about two feet above the surface.